Truth and Truthfulness

In an age of fundamentalism, terrorism and uncertainty, how can we reconcile competing claims on religious truth? We report from a recent conference in which philosophers and theologians explore ideas about truth and truthfulness.

Transcript

Andrew Murray: Truth is something that most people value but for different reasons. It is seen as a good in itself, as in the mediaeval understanding of the transcendental modes of being which see being good, one, and true as co-extensive. Truth is also valued for pragmatic reasons. When we act on principles that are false, our actions fail to achieve their goals.

Andrew Murray: It was Plato who recognised that for action, correct opinion is as useful as true knowledge, and that in many of the situations we face, correct opinion is the best that we can achieve, a view contested by the Enlightenment. Truth is valued for a third reason that proves to be more problematic. Truth is coercive. In other words, faced with a claim of truth that we cannot refute, we are generally pushed to accept it or to risk looking and feeling foolish. This gives claims to truth political weight, and those who would control us are often ready to marshal such claims to their advantage.

In uncertain times, and we surely live in those now, we tend to grasp more desperately at truth, at least for the pragmatic reason that failure of our actions in moments of adversity exposes us to risk. In this situation we often forget Plato's distinction and accept the claims of those who are most forceful in their assertion of truth, while failing to seek out those with the best record of achieving correct opinion. This gives rise to various forms of dogmatism and fundamentalism, some of which we'll hear about tonight.

Religious certainties can also be deceptive. As far back as Augustine and as recently as the encyclical ... (fades)

Andrew Murray: The world is so complex that no one person's ever likely to get a complete hold on it, so there are things that turn up from time to time, or frequently, whichever, that are clearly untrue, and I think a philosopher does more work trying to uncover and then refute those than in really being evangelical, if you like, for a truth that he or she might hold.

Gary Bryson: It's a huge topic isn't it, and a notoriously slippy one, the idea of truth and what truth is. What are you hoping to achieve over these two days?

Andrew Murray: What I'm hoping to achieve is that people who are quite seriously engaged in the issues have a chance - coming out of different disciplines - to propose the ideas that they have and have their peers agree or disagree, so that you get a very rich environment for the development of ideas around something that has contemporary interest.

Gary Bryson: When we think about inter-faith dialogue, or any kind of dialogue between different truths or different ideas of truth or different truth-seeking cultures or forms, one of the difficulties is the spectre of relativism, the idea that if we all want to talk to each other, we all have to lose something of our individual religious truth or cultural truth. That's a central concern isn't it, when you start to try to uncover the nature of truth?

Andrew Murray: I think it is, and when you move that into the religious sphere, and people trying to talk together across different denominations or different faiths, or religions that are quite diverse, I think that what you're trying to do there is recognise a common humanity, recognise that people have traditions of religious belief and practice, and that there's coherence and beauty in all of those; I think you are then trying to recognise that we're living increasingly in one world, and we have to be able to get on. So you're not actually trying to persuade people of the more fundamental, particularly revealed doctrines of your own religion, but you're trying to find ways of accommodation, that you live together, that you understand each other, you appreciate what's good; I think really recognising that you're not the only group that has provenance on living in the world that we're in, and we do need to live with other people.

Gary Bryson: Veronica Brady is Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the Department of English, Communications and Cultural Studies, the University of Western Australia.

Veronica Brady: 'What is truth?' said jesting Pilate, and did not stay to hear. That sentence is particularly apt today. As Jean Baudrillard suggests, ours is a culture, and I think Western culture in general if you like, which rests on the exultation of signs based on the denial of the reality of things, and I would add, people. Everything is so over-signified, so that meaning, and I'm assuming - I'm not a philosopher - I assume that meaning is a sort of synonym for truth, which is a sort of synonym for what is the case. I'm not a philosopher, so these things will do. But I think there's a general sense in our culture that meaning is not only undesirable, because it might upset you, but also unattainable. Now I think the result of that is that many of us have very little sense of any authority, any over-riding order, outside of the self, and therefore - this is a quotation this time from Theodore Adorno - 'We tend to bow down in the amor fati, the love of fate. We tend to bow down before the powers that be. That means that we tend to attribute reality to wishes and meaning to senseless compulsion.

At the other end of the scale we have the fundamentalists, of all kinds, whether they're religious, political or economic. They claim that they alone know the truth and possess it. Now what's my take on this situation? I find Bacon helpful here again - Bacon did live in the Elizabethan age, he knew something about Christian scriptures; he was reflecting on that scene in John 18 when Jesus stands before Pilate, the Roman governor, who asks him, 'What is truth?' And then as Bacon says, he doesn't stay to hear any answer that might be given - a postmodernist before the time. But had he been amongst the people around the table some hours before that, he might have heard Jesus say 'I am the way, and the truth, and the life'. I don't know what Bacon would have made of this, probably nothing much because his ... (fades)

Veronica Brady: Philosophers would not be particularly interested in that proposition I think. But I think theology is a slightly different discipline, and the person who made that claim was making the claim that truth's not something abstract in the proposition, but in fact it is experiential, it's the way you live your life. I would define truth as that which is the case, and I think each of us, we live as part of the fabric of a culture, that we live as part of the fabric of our own life, and if we live from the inside, as the great and good William Blake said, we carry our lives around with us like a tent, and each of us dwells in that specific tent of all of our experiences. Therefore if I want to find out what I believe to be the case, I have to try to listen to that intervening life, which I call the divine life, what it might be suggesting to me. So that's my proposition.

The words attributed to Jesus suggest that truth is not something abstract, not propositional, but it's experiential. There is some revelation in this man and the way he lives, but it happens to be a way which points beyond itself to a reason and an order beyond our comprehension to control. The mystery of what is ultimately the case, and to which Jesus was attuned, and to which he was obedient. So I'm saying that's my notion of what truth might be, but that is not to say as fundamentalists do, that scripture, or this claim, makes out a clear map of reality and code of behaviour. On the contrary, the truth embodied in this man has to be experienced and lived out according to our lights in our particular context, and by each of us trying to serve the god of Jesus 'wittily, in the tangle of our minds'. Conscience in that sense, as Christian tradition has almost universally held, is therefore the ultimate authority.

Now we do have problems today. I'm quoting Walter Benjamin this time. He observed that in our culture, experience has fallen in value, even fallen into bottomlessness - consider the media - and that may well be the reason why paradoxically the word 'truth' has increasingly become a weapon against others. We Christians have the truth, we Christians alone have the truth, so if you're Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, you haven't. That word 'truth' there is a weapon, it's a source of self-justification. But that also means that it's in danger of losing its ethical power, and thus serving the increasing inhumanity of our times, instead of, as I would suggest, truth, if you refer back to 'I am the way, the truth, and the life', it becomes a word which calls us to defend and enhance human dignity.

So the question, what is truth? - for me to work out ... (fades)

Veronica Brady: If God came amongst us in Jesus and claimed to be the truth, and to show us the way and to live life as it should be lived, then that is the absolute. But how we respond to that is the question which depends on our own conscience and our own ability to hear and to listen. But what I believe to be that ultimate is-ness which is divinity, doesn't necessarily judge people if they don't understand and they don't hear. And I have no right to judge other people because I don't know how they're hearing it. My criterion of truth is if it is destructive to human beings and to the rest of the creation, then that is an illusion, and to the extent that I can, I'd wish to contest that, though not in any violent way. The only way I think to enable people to see the truth is to enable them to listen to what is the case. And our philosophy I think, is still unfortunately influenced by Descartes' proposition, 'I think, therefore I am' and it always seemed to me that's a strange thing to say. Is-ness is, therefore I am.

Gary Bryson: Sister Veronica Brady from the University of Western Australia.

Doru Costache: My purpose is to draw the attention to the ecclesial alternative ... (fades)

Gary Bryson: The problem with truth is that it's not univocal, it's capable of being claimed by any number of meanings, both religious and secular. One way of making sense of competing truth claims was put forward by the Reverend Doctor Doru Costache, lecturer in patristic studies at St Andrew's Greek Orthodox Theological College in Sydney.

Doru Costache: ... acknowledge the traditional wisdom of the saints. And my guess is, we already witnessed the beginning of such a process with the emergence of ... (fades)

We have different access to truth according to our own worthiness so to speak. That is, according to our existential placement, situation. And according to the Orthodox church tradition, this access to truth is always conditioned by an inner disposition and let's say purification and also intimacy with God. I use this word hierarchical system, but of course it has nothing to do with the current understanding of hierarchy. This is not a matter of positions or institutions, it is more like a self-obvious scale of values and it is a matter of acquiring more nobility, existentially speaking, personally speaking, and this nobility puts us into the position of being able to approach truth in a more accurate way.

One of the most interesting features of modern culture is the attempt to democratise the access to knowledge, to indiscriminately open its doors to the great public. At an epistemological level, the content of this unprecedented major cultural shift may be expressed as the passage from the traditional paradigm of the forbidden garden's gatekeepers, to that of the fountain of knowledge at everyone's disposal.

These non-traditional shifts started to become obvious with the Enlightenment, and the French Encyclopaedic project. Reacting to the previous establishment of the hierarchical system, the Enlightenment's promoters launched the egalitarian manifesto labelled by Karl Popper as the myth of public opinion. According to this manifesto, within the modern frame, everybody is granted the access to knowledge with the subsequent specification that the opinion of the majority establishes what the truth is. The fundamental achievement of the process is eminently represented by modern sciences, speaking, in theory, a universal language, and aiming to configure the general mindset of society.

However, three questionable aspects of this ... (fades)

Doru Costache: Modernity promised to everyone free access and equal access to truth and knowledge. This is a very noble ideal but this is a false track and a dead end.

Gary Bryson: Doru Costache made a distinction between the modern mind and the traditional mind. I asked him about the implications of this for truth-seeking.

Doru Costache: The traditional mind is a holistic one, trying to embrace everything, God and man, heaven and earth, life and death; the traditional mind embraces all reality and everything that pertains to life. It is also another feature of the traditional mindset. For instance, it is oriented towards all times and all spaces. By comparison, the modern mind is reductionist and oriented exclusively towards, let's say, earthly things. And also the future modern mindset is anti-traditional, not paying attention to wisdom, not paying attention to the guidelines coming from an experience of life. And although these two mindsets are quite different in their structures and intentions and methodologies, they can be reconciled because traditional mind is also open towards the modern mind and its expectations and its methods and intentions.

Gary Bryson: You told a story about Mount Sinai and the climbing of the mountain - the mountain-climbing theory of truth.

Doru Costache: Yes, it's a favourite image in our Orthodox tradition, and many of the fathers of the ancient times dealt with this image of Moses and the 70 elders of Israel climbing up the mountain while the crowds were not allowed to even touch the bottom of the mountain. It's an interesting image, very significant for this conversation and this topic. The crowds were not allowed, not because they were simply forbidden to touch the mountain or start the ascension, they were not really prepared for that journey of acquiring knowledge, and this because of their lack of purity and also problematisation. How can one receive truth if he or she does not look for truth? According to traditional representation, interpretation of this, well, event, Biblical parable, the people here at the bottom of the mountain, are far from any problematisation, far from any true knowledge. It is not like a doom, they are not doomed ... (fades)

Doru Costache: If we climb up a tower or a tree for instance, or a hill, we have a broader image of reality, and this image also functions in this respect. And the elders of Israel, some of them acquired less, some of them acquired more insight into reality according to their personal efforts. But it was only Moses who was able to challenge himself in an absolute way, that is to renounce all his prejudices, also all his virtues, according to St Gregory of Nyssa for instance, and naked, he presented himself in front of God and was able to receive the illumination, that is to have full access to truth.

Gary Bryson: When we talk about the traditional mind, we're talking about a religious mind. Is there also a sense in which there are different traditional minds, and I'm wondering now if we're looking at aspects of inter-faith dialogue. Surely there could be a traditional Muslim mind and a traditional Christian mind. Now those two minds don't always come together, do they?

Doru Costache: Indeed. Tradition and modernity are to be found in any tradition, so to speak. There are secular Christians and there are traditional Christians, there are secular Muslims and traditional Muslims. When I speak of traditional mind generically speaking, I refer of course to a religious tradition. But to use again that image with the mountain, I would say all traditions are like a group of men attacking the mountain from different perspectives. Some try to climb up the mountain from the north, some from the south, they have different perspectives on the same mountain. They are not aware of the fact that they really experience the same mountain and they also have not developed this awareness of the others. But in the end, they all will meet at the top of the mountain and only then they would be able to put together their knowledge, understand the truth is always beyond their systems of reference, methodologies, they all climbed up the same mountain but in different ways with different methods, from different points of view. But all these points of view will join there at the top.

And on this Encounter on ABC Radio National, we're exploring ideas about the nature of truth and truthfulness, the topic under discussion at a recent conference held at the Catholic Institute in Sydney.

It's a moot point as to whether or not seekers after religious truth are all climbing the same mountain. Nevertheless, there does seem to be a common denominator in that access to religious truth requires faith, openness to the eternal mysteries, and to guidance by those of greater divinity.

But what of the more prosaic and everyday notion of truthfulness? What weight should philosophers give to understanding expressions of honesty, loyalty and faithfulness in the ways we live and interact together?

Richard Campbell is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the Australian National University. He delivered a paper to the conference on 'Truth as Faithfulness'. As he explained later, he believes that truth in the context of action has been under-explored by philosophers.

Richard Campbell: Philosophers, particularly in the English speaking countries, have for over 100 years been totally focused on the idea that truth really just means the correctness of what one says. And I want to suggest that that's got problems in its own right; it's too narrow a conception, and that instead the primary meaning of the word, that's actually there in the dictionary entrants for the word 'truth', is that to be true is to be faithful, trustworthy, reliable and genuine.

Gary Bryson: Can it be simplified by saying that truth is what we do, not what we say?

Richard Campbell: More importantly, what we do, only secondarily and in a derivative way has it to do with what we say. Because speaking is one of the things we do. So if you want to give an account of the truth of statements, you've got to start with what's the speaker doing, and I think that way will give a more helpful approach into what the correctness of the statement might be. But what I was particularly arguing is that the notion of truth there, which is the one that people tend to focus on all the time, is actually borrowed across from the other seats of the word that play when people talk about being a true friend, that's a friend you can rely on; songs about true love, being true to yourself, to your spouse, to some ideals, values, whatever. They're the primary means of the word that play in those uses.

Gary Bryson: If in fact truth can be discerned through action, you're not saying only through action, are you?

Richard Campbell: No, I'm not saying only through action. You certainly can call a statement true, you can even call a sentence true, but the truth of the sentence borrows from the fact that the sentence is used to make a statement, the statement is true because it borrows from the fact that someone is saying something, that they're doing something. So you get a transfer of meaning across, and the meaning it transfers across is that of being reliable, faithful, dependable, trustworthy. I'm not aware of anybody who's seriously focused on the idea that truth is to be done, not just to be said.

In fact there's a passage in the Gospel of St John that literally says 'He who does the truth, comes to the light'. The translators of the New English Bible thought that made so little sense, they translated it as 'The honest man comes to the light' as if the only way you could do the truth is by speaking honestly. This other idea is washed out of their consciousness.

Gary Bryson: So if truth can be best understood as an active faithfulness, what does this mean for religious faith itself?

Richard Campbell: Well it means faith is not just a matter of believing a set of propositions, though of course it involves that, but it fits much more closely with the idea that faith involves commitments, loyalties, that involves a certain genuineness, in fact it's interesting that the Hebrew word in the Old Testament emeth sometimes has to be translated into English as 'faithfulness' and sometimes as 'truth'. And sometimes just as 'faith'. To say that truth is fundamentally being faithful, is not at all to adopt the view that you can believe what you like, as if anything goes, but it focuses on this idea of being trustworthy, reliable, dependable, that's the core notion that is there in the Old Testament, it's there in Old English, it's there in a number of other languages, and has been forgotten by our philosophers.

Being faithful also requires that one acts authentically in the sense that they're actions that come from myself, that I have made my own and it's not just enough to kind of go along with ordinary expectations. A husband's not faithful to his wife, just because for social conventional reasons, he thinks he'd better not take off with any other woman; that's not really being faithful, because it's really not coming from himself, it's just conforming to a social expectation. A genuine loyal friend is one who isn't just going along with what the other friend wants, or would like, or whatever, it's rather someone who is actively all the time thinking of how to help and enhance and honour his friend. Come to aid in times of stress, and all that. So it's very important that it involves the commitment of oneself, in that sense it has to really be owned by someone who is a true friend, a true lover, or being true to oneself.

Gary Bryson: Professor Richard Campbell.

Religious truths by their very nature require faith to sustain them. But what happens to our understanding of truth when that faith is tested and found wanting? Well one approach to this question can be found in the Hebrew story of Job, as the conference heard from Dr Laurie Woods, Senior Lecturer in Biblical Studies in the School of Theology, the Australian Catholic University.

Laurie Woods: The Book of Job, like the whole of the Hebrew Bible, deals with relationships, and the tension that forms the very core of the drama in Job, is created by the curdling of the principal relationships between God and Job, and Job and his friends.

In the prose prologue, the patriarchal figure of Job is depicted as a man of property, with an affable and upright character, and a leader amongst his people. In addition to wealth, prosperity, the enduring satisfaction of a loving family and a circle of loyal and like-minded friends, he is described as the greatest of all the peoples of the East. In the eyes of his contemporaries Job has been the object of divine favour and his prestige, material success and devotion to pious practices bear witness to his being an Ish Tam v'yashar - a man of integrity, righteousness, and balance.

By the end of the prose tale, the tables have completely turned, and we see Job sitting among the ashes, that is in the town rubbish tip, where refuse was regularly burnt, the narrator uses the quick succession of tragic events to show how Job's life has been completely capsized. He's intent on making a stark contrast between Job's former position as the greatest man in the land, and his fall to utter dispossession and misery.

Gary Bryson: In the story of Job, God allows Satan to smite Job with terrible afflictions. Seeking an explanation for his misfortune, Job's friends insist that he is being punished by God for his sins.

Laurie Woods: Job's experience is now leading him to doubt the truths he once lived by and the insistence of his friends is only causing him to dissent from the traditional Jewish lore of divine retribution. Job is convinced of his innocence, and draws the conclusion that his suffering is unmerited. The God he faithfully served is now being unfair. Such an accusation strikes Bildad as heresy, and he leaps in to defend God's justice and the accepted view of divine retribution. He imagines that his parable of the two plants will illustrate his apologia for the destruction of the wicked and the wellbeing of the just. He flatly contradicts Job's insisting that God is perfectly just and will not reject a just person. Hence Job's situation must derive from some kind of sin.

Zophar is the most direct of Job's friends, and the least tactful. He is adamant that Job is demonstrating arrogance with his avowal of innocence. Given the mystery of the universe, Job has no right to challenge God, and presume that the Almighty is unjust. Zophar calls on the tradition of wisdom to support his argument and tells Job he should renounce iniquity and repent. The irony here is that Zophar is most probably the youngest and the least experienced of Job's friends, and his response to Job comes not from the heart or personal experience, but from the teachings of traditional wisdom. Not that these are in any way wrong, but Zophar's words are typical of the easy advice that proceeds from the person who has not had to suffer like the poor wretch he's addressing. Looking past these friends, Job thinks that if only he could meet God face to face, he could put his case, and be vindicated. His only hope for redress is that he might have his day in court where this terrible mistake can be uncovered.

As it happens, Job gets to meet God, and it is with this meeting that the poet brings his discussion to a climax. However, Job does not encounter God in his own terms, and there's no engagement with God. Instead Yaweh challenges Job head-on, from the thunderous melee of a storm, and makes him realise that he has no understanding of creation or its works.

The list of unfathomable wonders contained in these speeches of God, serves to underscore human impotence in the presence of the Almighty. In addition, the poet clearly implies that human beings are mistaken in thinking that the natural world has been put in place for their benefit. It is sheer arrogance for humans to imagine that nature should function and unfold according to human standards of expectations. The puny nature of the human intellect is totally incapable of discerning, much less understanding, the order and purpose by which God regulates the universe. In view of all this, Job comes to realise that he's been grossly ... (fades)

Laurie Woods: I think it's a shame that so much of the story of Job particularly in the minds of your average Bible reader, focuses on the suffering of Job, the innocent suffering, and not on the way he tries to deal with it, which is to reject pat answers that say, 'You must be a bad guy if you're suffering so badly'. And that's where the poet is really getting to. And the richness of the poetry, when you look at it in the original, the richness of the irony in the Hebrew poetry, derives from this quest, to find the truth at the end of this trial.

The creator of the universe in all its variety and wonder, encourages the reader to reflect on and appreciate the limitless dynamism that fills creation. A dynamism that far from being finished, continues to expand and explode with fresh growth towards the unknowable telos. At the same time, the poet cautions the reader to be wary of being closed-minded with the complacent certainty of having reached the pot of gold, and of possessing the only pin number for truth.

Job has learned that not only can truth and uncertainty coexist, but that truth can stand up to scrutiny, whereby it may be confirmed as authentic truth or demolished as counterfeit. The poet has characterised Job as a ... (fades)

Laurie Woods: Arch-conservatism really relies on what's black and white doesn't it, so that if you can actually pinpoint something, that's fine. I've often had the discussion, just with undergrads, asking them what they understand by faith, and you get a variety of answers of course, and I've said, 'Doesn't faith strike you as being wishy-washy? If you know something, then you don't have faith, if you can disprove something, you don't need faith, but faith is fairly quicksandy'. And I remember being buoyed up by the release of that information shortly after Mother Teresa's death, that she wrestled for years with the existence of God. And what is faith but carrying on the project she was doing and yet coming in and out of periods of doubt, of whether you're there or not, you know?

Gary Bryson: Laurie Woods, from the Australian Catholic University.

A recurring concern throughout the conference was that of truth-seeking. One of the greatest truth seekers in recent times was of course, Mahatma Gandhi, and Gandhi's take on truth was discussed in a paper by one of the final speakers. Dr William Emilsen is Lecturer in World Religions at the United Theological College, and Associate Professor in Church History at the Sydney College of Divinity. He told the conference that Gandhi revered truth above all else.

William Emilsen: Mahatma Gandhi is most widely revered for his practice and theory of non-violence, but non-violence was not the primary focus of Gandhi's life, it was truth. Truth was the prime concern of his life and conduct, sovereign principle that included all other principles. Gandhi wrote in his autobiography, subtitled The Story of My Experiments with Truth, that he came across the method of non-violence as part of his endless experimentation with truth. He believed that sooner or later, anyone committed to truth would discover the importance of non-violence. But the reverse was not necessarily the case, that a believer in non-violence would be committed to truth.

Truth, or Satya was the foundational idea of Gandhi's thinking. Truth was the spiritual bedrock of his political and social engagement. Truth was for him the substance of morality, truth represented the ultimate source of authority and appeal, the raison d'etre of human existence. Truth, he called it his polar star, his treasure beyond price. Truth effectively became Gandhi's religion, and his god. Indeed he boldly proclaimed that there is no religion greater than truth.

Gandhi sometimes wrote of truth as an impersonal absolute, an unseen power or unifying force pervading all things, pure consciousness, that changes the essence of life beyond all name and form. In 1905 for example, while still in South Africa, he wrote an article called The Oriental Idea of Truth in his paper, Indian Opinion, and in this article, Gandhi refuted Lord Curzon's claim - Curzon was then Viceroy of India - that truth was largely a Western conception, whereas in the East, craftiness and diplomatic wile were esteemed. The article is important because it provides clear and early evidence that Gandhi was sufficiently familiar with a whole range of texts on truth and truthfulness from various Indian religious sources to refute what he called Curzon's baseless and offensive imputation.

And there as well, Gandhi defined truth in ontological and metaphysical terms. 'Truth is that which is, and untruth that which is not'. And supported his definition with a saying from Bishmar, the hero of the Mahabharata, 'Truth is eternal Brahmin, everything rests on truth'.

Despite Gandhi's remarks to the contrary, it would be a mistake however, to think of Gandhi as an Advaitin, that is, a believer in the indeterminate, impersonal, absolute. Gandhi was a theist; he was born into a Vaishnava family who conceive of a god possessing auspicious qualities and perfections like consciousness, omnipotence, omniscience, benevolence and all mercifulness. Gandhi frequently refers to God as Brahma, that's the personification of Brahmin in the Hindu trinity, or the Trimurti, and according to Hinduism, says Gandhi, citing one of the Upanishads, Brahma is truth eternal, intelligence immeasurable. The fullest description of God that the tongue can possibly utter, is God is truth.

Gandhi firmly believed in God and for a long time, for almost three-quarters of this life, identified God with truth. By the mid-1920s however, he began to reverse the order. In a talk with Christian missionaries in Darjeeling in 1925, Gandhi said that for him, God and truth were convertible terms. Then in the following year he declared, 'To me, Truth is God and there is no way to find Truth except the way of non-violence', and then again in December, 1931, Gandhi was asked by a group of conscientious objectors at Lausanne in Switzerland, why he regarded God as Truth, and he replied that he had now, after 50 years of continuous and relentless searching, moved from saying 'God is Truth', to saying 'Truth is God'.

Gandhi's reversal of the proposition God is Truth, bristles with philosophical difficulties. My concern here is more with the main reasons for the reversal. I'll just deal with two of them, there are more than those, but I'll just do the two main ones.

Firstly, the reversal of the traditional theistic formulation is pragmatic. It is an attempt to be as inclusive as possible. As a national political figure, Gandhi had to work with Muslims, who had a different understanding of God to himself, and as well with people who for various reasons, had no belief in God at all, or at least seriously doubted God's existence. He discovered however, that truth still had an enormous appeal to them, regardless of their views about God. The proposition Truth is God therefore enabled Gandhi to embrace and engage theists, atheists, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists, Christians and Parsis etc.

Secondly, the proposition Truth is God places the emphasis on truth rather than other concepts usually associated with divinity, such as love, life, good, peace, justice, beauty and hope. Gandhi's experiments with truth had led him to the conclusion that when we say God is Truth, it could mean God is Love, or God is Life, or God is Good, etc., but when we say Truth is God, it is more definitive. In Gandhi's understanding the pursuit of goodness and beauty and love etc. were contained in the pursuit of truth. Gandhi then goes on to make this important distinction between two kinds of truth: absolute truth and relative truth. For Gandhi, absolute truth alone is God. We can never know if in its fullest sense, we can only catch faint glimpses of it. Gandhi confessed that while absolute truth was beyond our reach while we are still in the body, it nonetheless should not be ignored, rather Gandhi held absolute truth as an ideal that should be constantly pursued and meditated upon. And this he did by introducing the idea of relative truth, that serves as a guide on the way towards absolute truth. Unlike absolute truth, we can know relative truth and follow it to the best of our abilities. Human beings, according to Gandhi, can at best only approximate absolute truth through their understanding of relative, imperfect, historically and culturally conditioned truth. Or put theologically, the more truthful we are, the nearer we are to God.

Gary Bryson: Reminding us that the theme of the conference was 'Truth and Truthfulness in Uncertain Times', William Emilsen asked finally how Gandhi might have responded to terrorism, or more precisely, to Osama bin Laden.

William Emilsen: Gandhi and Osama bin Laden would have had much in common. Both were anti-imperialist, and in revolt against the greatest powers of their times. Both were critical of the Western pursuit of global hegemony and believed that the Western civilisation did not represent the only way to lead the good life. Both were deeply religious around their politics in their religious commitments, and belief that religion should play an important part in public life.

But their understandings of truth are profoundly different, I think. Bin Laden believes in the glorification of violence, and the establishment of al Qa'eda terrorist camps in his fight against tyranny. Gandhi believed that violence was inimical to truth, and so trained his followers in the non-violent measures of Satyagraha or true force.

Gandhi was no stranger to terrorism. He had a long acquaintance with terrorists with India, and repeatedly challenged their violent methods. Violence, be it against the British imperialists in India or the American ones in the Middle East, would never in Gandhi's opinion, achieve anything lasting. And in the case of bin Laden's terrorist campaigns, it would only help to discredit Islam and associate it with violence and destruction in the minds of people of goodwill throughout the world.

Gandhi would have also reminded bin Laden that his own imperialist desires went contrary to his own rhetoric. Bin Laden's vision of a united Islam would have seemed to Gandhi to be confused or disingenuous. Gandhi would have reminded bin Laden that all conquests and empires involve bloodshed, oppression and injustice, and the Ottoman empire, and the Moghul empire, were no different. Muslim conquerors and even some Muslim rulers in India had destroyed Hindu temples, looted Hindu property and converted vast masses by a combination of inducement and force. They destroyed traditional African cultures, and social structures, and sought to obliterate their collective memories of their pre-Islamic past. And although Muslim conquerors treated Christians and Jews better, they never granted them equal citizenship.

Now since all this happened a long time ago in most cases, Gandhi would have insisted that there was no point in lamenting it nor of apportioning blame. But bin Laden did have, in his view, a duty to acknowledge the full truth of the past.

Finally, Gandhi would have challenged bin Laden's notion of Islam as the definitive and final word of God, whose purity has to be safeguarded at all costs. Gandhi would have acknowledged the spiritual depths within the Qur'an, but he would have also insisted that Islam and the Qur'an did not have the monopoly on truth and spirituality. Gandhi would have been disturbed by bin Laden's absolutist claims and would have opposed his attempts to impose his Islamic principles on others. As a votary of truth, a follower of truth, in Gandhi's opinion, could not regard one's own views as being alone truthful. The relativity of truth must allow for compromise, you must not use force to try and impose your views, and your view of truth on another.

To conclude: We cannot know certainty in this world, says Gandhi - all that appears and happens about and around us, is uncertain, transient. Only God that is Truth is certain. We are indeed blessed if we catch a glimpse of that certainty. Thank you.

Gary Bryson: William Emilsen. And just a flavour there of the rich diversity of ideas from the Biennial Conference in Philosophy, Religion and Culture, hosted by the Catholic Institute in Sydney. The theme was 'Truth and Truthfulness in Uncertain Times'. My thanks to the convenor, Andrew Murray and to those who contributed to the program.

The keynote speech to the conference was given by Dr Douglas Pratt of the University of Waikato, in New Zealand. Dr Pratt spoke on 'Fundamentalism and Terrorism, The Contemporary Religious Challenge', and we hope to be able to bring you the full recording of that presentation sometime in the next few weeks.